Sandra Sterle

I was unable to meet with Sandra Sterle in person, but happily chatted her on Skype.

One of Sterle's projects that immediately attracted my attention wasNausea, which she first performed in 2008 Split. While the song “A Dalmatian Man Wears a Chain Around his Neck” by Mišo Kovač, a cult icon of Croatian folk music, plays in the background, the artist vomited, or at least attempted to. Sterle described this singer as the type that would be well-liked by “football supporters,” and has also described Split itself as a very athletic and sporty city, as opposed to a cultural one—something she noticed when she moved there in the early 2000s. For the artist, the song represents the patriarchal culture of Dalmatia. As Ivana Bago has written about the piece, “By publicly inducing vomiting and displaying her own position of powerlessness in the face of the norms of the social majority, the artist constitutes herself as a subject in rebellion."

The performance attracted a great deal of attention in the mass media and on social media, generating conversations in chat rooms not about the patriarchal culture that Sterle called attention to, but about the nature of art. This particular use of performance was apparently something new for the surrounding community in Split, despite the rich tradition of performance in Croatia (not to mention in Split) which demonstrates a relative lack of visibility of earlier performance pieces from the 1970s and 1980s, which were known to or acknowledged only by a smaller and closed circle.

In starting a conversation not only about gender issues, but also about the nature of contemporary art, Sterle's is an important contribution to the contemporary performance landscape of Eastern Europe.

Performing the East

Amy Bryzgel is an art historian writing a book on performance art in Central and Eastern Europe. This website is a developing archive charting the writing of that book, documenting travel through the former communist countries of Eastern Europe, from the Baltics to the Balkans, in search of performance art.

Readers of this site will no doubt be aware of the momentous concert that took place in Pyongyang last night, August 19, 2015. Laibach became the first foreign rock group ever to play a gig in North Korea. I've written a piece about the significance of Laibach playing in North Korea, of all places, for The Conversation UK. Please check it out by following the link!

A new and exciting opportunity: SCOT//EAST is an exhibition and concurrent events programme that aim to examine the impact of migration on individuals, specifically with regard to gender identity, taking place in March 2016 in Aberdeen to coincide with International Women's Day. We are looking for artists of both regional backgrounds, whose work deals specifically with gender and sexual identity, to connect with us to learn more about our project. Contact us at: scot.east.art@gmail.com

Amy Bryzgel discusses the panel she co-chaired, with Andrea Euringer-Batorova, at the Association of Art Historians annual conference in 2015, in Norwich, UK, "Subversive Practices and Alternative Realities in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe since 1945."

I am pleased to announce that I will be chairing a session at next year's Association of Art Historians annual conference, and I would welcome your proposals for a paper on artistic re-enactments in the context of performance art in Eastern Europe.

After Hours: Extreme Makeover marks the formal closure of Aberdeen Art Gallery for 2.5 years as part of a major redevelopment programme. This event offers visitors the unique opportunity to experience the Art Gallery as never before…empty!